It's been a while since I've written about the kids. With the hectic work schedule from things like the new tv series, I have been putting off writing about the little things that have been happening in our home. So here we go.
Army Boy
Let's work backwards. Monday morning, as I donned my Smart 4 for a briefing and inoculation session at my reservist unit, Isaac looked on with fascination. "Where is your cap, Papa?" he asked. To him, the uniform is not complete without the cap. He even asked me to take down his "army box" from the high shelf, a full set of army clothes and gear my brother bought for him from Shanghai.
He showed me his mini-water bottle, walkie talkie with built-in static sound, and even a topo map with its own waterproof plastic cover.
I am not sure if I should be happy he is so keen to don army greens but I suppose boys love playing soldier. It made me wonder what it would be like when it was his turn to serve.
Styrofoam Toys
Sunday night, I lugged home a tower fan for the study. The old one was making a racket and annoying Mommy, so I used some of the government GST offset money to get us a Mistral tower fan.
The box contained a ton of environmentally unfriendly styrofoam, which Isaac and Joy promptly started playing with. They started with stacking them up like a block of flats, and then destroyed the building with a kick. Their wanton destruction made them laugh like hyenas, and they spent a good part of the evening building their tower of destruction, and then tearing it down. I had to intervene in the end, because I was concerned that too much laughing this close to bed time would give them bad dreams.
This is the reason we don't buy that many toys for them. They seem to have a knack for finding fun in the simplest of things.
Children Remember Promises
On the way to church on Sunday morning, Isaac asked me in the car, "Papa! You know, that day, you say, that that day, you have a Spider Man, the Spider Man CD, you know, you said. Where, where is it?"
Doh! I forgot all about that.
I had mentioned last week to Isaac I had a new Spider Man movie. He has never seen a Spider Man movie before, and I thought it would be nice to show him one. It was actually a Blu-Ray edition of Spider Man 3 which I bought for some testing of the PS3 for the tv show.
In the course of the week, I had changed my mind about showing that Blu-ray DVD to him because I didn't want the maids to tinker with the PS3 and spoiling the loaner set. I had plans to buy, instead, a VCD or DVD version of any of the other Spidey movies for him to be played on our regular DVD player.
His comment was the push I needed to get the movie pronto. "Yes," I said, "Papa will let you watch a Spider Man movie later when you go to your 婆婆's (maternal grandma)."
I quickly popped into the DVD store during lunch and picked up Spider Man 2.1 on VCD (it has 8 extra minutes not seen at the movies, big wow). My mom-in-law only has a VCD player in the room where the kids watch an endless stream of Barney, Wiggles and old Spider Man cartoons, every time they visit. While it pained me to pick such a low definition medium, it was the practical thing to do. When Isaac saw the VCD box on the table, he insisted on carrying it everywhere until we reached 婆婆's house.
Never make a promise to a kid if you can't make it happen. They have incredibly good memories for promises.
In case I never mentioned this before, Isaac is a huge Spider Man fan. He has the t-shirts, underwear and the shoes, and even a creepy Spidey soft toy that is taller than he is. It used to frighten him, that soft toy. Now he holds it by the neck and makes it talk, and even takes photos of it with his hand-me-down 2 megapixel Fuji digital camera.
He can even hum the tune from old Spider Man cartoon series, the "ngeow ngeow ngeow, ngeow ngeow ngeow ngeow, ngeow ngeow ngeow" tune from the 90s Spidey series. His maternal grandma bought the series from in dodgy VCD format from a Pasar Malam (night market). Isaac laps it up, and doesn't get bored watching the same episodes in badly encoded 352x288 VCD resolution, week after week at her place.
A Visit to Terminal 3
On the 1st of May, the Labour Day holiday, we decided to take the kids to the airport, to visit the new Terminal 3. It was already their third time (they went with my parents twice) but a first time for the wife and me.
It was a pleasant day out. The kids enjoyed running around the large new terminal although Joy was a little frightened by the giant flower thing at first.
Even Faith was well-behaved and not freaked out by the new environment.
I had a rude shock at the Kopitiam food court though. $4 for a bowl of noodles and $4.50 for some chai tow kuay? Wah lau eh.
I made a mistake of taking Isaac into a toy store too. I just wanted to see the new Iron Man figures, but ended up having to explain to a crying Isaac why we are not buying any toys here.
"Just looking at toys" is an alien concept to most kids. Good thing my mom insists my kids don't develop a sense of entitlement in toy stores. "Cannot make it a habit, go to toy store means must buy something," she says. I agree.
Faith's First Word
Faith is still not able to talk, her autism getting in the way of her speech development. But she has one consistent word in her vocab: Elmo.
Yes, her first word was not Papa, not Mommy, not Milk. It was Elmo.
She loves Elmo. I don't really know why. We have at least four Elmo toys in the house, all of them gifts. 3 soft toys and one that moves when you pose it. Then there is the little Elmo boombox player she likes (which broke and which reader Jonathan Poon and his friend Yew Yeen promptly replaced with TWO from the States, so kind souls, you two are).
We had a pleasant surprise when she started going around saying "Eh-mo" one day. And this was not one of her one-off words, words that you hear her say once and then never hear again. This was a keeper.
She is going through a phase now where she grabs my finger to point at stuff, expecting me to say what it is. For example, she would pull my finger to a painting and I would say "Picture". It is her way of learning new words, and more importantly, her attempt at conversation, I suspect.
She usually chooses things she already knows. Her favourite objects are the floor, the door, the window, and yes, Elmo.
When you are waiting for speech from your 7-year-old autistic daughter, "Eh-mo" is as good a first word as any.
This is the song
La la la la
Faithie's song.
La la la la,
La la la la,
Faithie's song.
La la la
La la la la, la
La la la
La la la la, la
I love to sing,
La la la la,
Faithie's song.
La la la la,
La la la la,
Faithie's song.
I love the music.
I love the words.
That's Faithie's song.
